Spy Drone That Can Land On Walls

You just know that spy agencies around the world are drooling over this video. Get your fly swatters ready! As reported by BotJunkie:

Stanford’s Biomimetics Laboratory is full of all kinds of neat stuff, and when we were checking out Stickybot during National Robotics Week, we got a tip about this awesome perching UAV, developed by Alexis Lussier Desbiens.

As you can see from the vid, the UAV uses little spines like Spinybot as opposed to a sticky material like Stickybot. At this point, spines are much more effective at adhering to rough surfaces, while the synthetic gecko toe material only really sticks to smooth surfaces (unlike geckos themselves). Despite the differences between the two sticking technologies, the challenges to stickiness are similar: you need pliable toes that can individually conform to a surface at a specific angle, and if you don’t get that, you lose sticking efficiency and (possibly) your robot…